Summary: Perhaps the oldest alphabetic inscription ever found in Canaan adds to the debate over the alphabet’s history, and the claims of the Bible.
… Joshua charged those who went to write the description of the land, saying, “Go up and down in the land and write a description and return to me… “So the men went and passed up and down in the land and wrote in a book a description of it by towns in seven divisions. Then they came to Joshua to the camp at Shiloh. – Joshua 18:8-9 (ESV)
Six Ancient Letters on a Potsherd from Lachish
Many historians assert that writing at the time of ancient Israel was limited to a few elites. The Bible, however, makes many statements implying that writing was more widespread. Now, one of the most ancient inscriptions to use alphabetic script ever discovered is contributing to the debate and shedding light on the early history of the alphabet.
An inscription appearing to contain six letters written on two lines has been found on the remains of a milk jug. The potsherd was found in the excavations at ancient Lachish, Israel’s 2nd largest city after Jerusalem for much of its biblical history. The dig has been conducted by the Austrian Archaeological Institute since 2017 and led by Dr. Felix Höflmayer. It’s the date assigned to the inscription that is causing the stir.
“Dating to the fifteenth century BC, this inscription is currently the oldest securely dated alphabetic inscription from the Southern Levant, and may therefore be regarded as the ‘missing link,’” Höflmayer and his colleagues wrote in the Journal Antiquity last month, describing their finds. The Levant is an area that includes modern Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.
The potsherd measures just 3.5 by 4 centimeters. “The inner surface of the sherd’s rim is inscribed in dark ink, with letters written diagonally. Two lines each containing three letters can be discerned. Two additional characters are visible on the right side of the upper line, and another is visible between the two lines,” Höflmayer writes.
The researchers have identified the letters as Semitic alphabetic symbols. One line contains ayin, bet, and dalet, which may form the word “eved” meaning “slave.” They suggest that the other line may be spelling “nectar” from the nun-peh-tav (n-p-t) letters. Certainly, definitive interpretations from fragments containing such short messages remain uncertain.
Although Höflmayer and the other researchers stress that this is not a Hebrew alphabet, as seen in the film Patterns of Evidence: The Moses Controversy, this early Semitic script is extremely similar to what would develop into the widely recognized Old Hebrew script (or paleo-Hebrew) centuries later. The main reason Hebrew is not considered a viable candidate is the view that the Israelites didn’t emerge in Canaan until centuries after the Lachish sherd – around 1200 BC, after some kind of exodus in the time of Pharaoh Ramesses II.
Dating the Lachish Inscription
To date, the world’s earliest known alphabetic writing comes from the Serabit el-Khadim mines of the Sinai Peninsula, as well as at a place called Wadi el-Hol in Egypt’s Nile Valley. Those inscriptions have been dated as early as 1842 BC by scholars such as Professor Douglas Petrovich, because one was found abutted to a datable Egyptian hieroglyphic text.
Previously, the oldest alphabetic inscriptions from Canaan came from several centuries later – around the 13th or 12th centuries BC. That is why Höflmayer calls the latest find a missing link; it helps fill in the gap of missing centuries between the other oldest finds in Canaan and the earliest ones in Egypt and the Sinai. Höflmayer writes that other contenders for the oldest in the Levant (including a dagger that is even older also found at Lachish nearly a century ago) are uncertain because they either were not found in place within a secure archaeological layer, or they are disputed as to whether they actually contain alphabetic signs. (See the recent discovery of a 12th century BC temple at Lachish.)
The archaeologists at Lachish found the sherd in a burnt layer near the base of a wall that formed the southern face of a fortification system that included a city wall and tower. Carbon 14 tests were done on organic samples in the layer that gave them confidence in dating the find to around 1450 BC, in the first century of the Late Bronze Age. This date would be just prior to the Conquest and Judges period of the Bible, but questions have been raised related to the dating of archaeological layers and the reliability of radiocarbon dating. (Do carbon dating errors challenge historical conclusions?)
The Biblical Implications of an Alphabet in Canaan
This Semitic alphabet is believed to be the forerunner of all modern alphabets as it was transferred to the Phoenicians and Greeks and then into the Latin of Rome (and European alphabets). We take the alphabet for granted today, but its development changed the world, making reading and writing accessible to common people who didn’t have the opportunity to specialize in the complicated and cumbersome writing systems like hieroglyphics in Egypt or cuneiform in Mesopotamia. The power of the alphabet was its simplicity and flexibility, allowing all the words of a language to be written with just a small set of phonetic symbols.
A Semitic alphabet (ideally, Hebrew) is almost certainly what Moses used to write the first five books of the Bible. Over the last few centuries, scholars have increasingly doubted that Moses wrote the first biblical books (known as the Torah in Hebrew or the Pentateuch in Greek). While their arguments derived from many lines of evidence, their conclusions were bolstered by the attitude that Moses’ couldn’t have written the Bible so early in history anyway, because there was no alphabet available for him to use.
The continuing discoveries of these early alphabetic inscriptions shows that this criticism has no basis. (See evidence of soldier messages that suggest the Bible was written earlier than many believe.)
In The Moses Controversy film, Egyptologist David Rohl used the dates for the emergence of the alphabet in Egypt and the Sinai to put forward the idea that Joseph, as a Hebrew who was second in command of all Egypt, may have even invented the alphabet. Whether he invented it or merely used his position to help spread the use of an older innovation, the history of the script does seem to match the Israelite presence in Egypt, followed by their exodus to Canaan.
A significant issue related to the alphabet and the Bible is the common skepticism that literacy was not as common as the Bible depicts. Most historians believe only a handful of scribes and priests would have had the ability to read and write. However, a sample of biblical passages from the period of the Judges and beyond, indicates that much broader reading and writing abilities are assumed.
“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart… You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” – Deuteronomy 6:6-9
“When a man …writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand…” – Deuteronomy 24:1-3
“And when he [the king] sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life …” – Deuteronomy 17:18-20
And he [Gideon] captured a young man of Succoth and questioned him. And he wrote down for him the officials and elders of Succoth, seventy-seven men. – Judges 8:14
This would have been feasible with the simplicity of an alphabet like that used in the Lachish inscription. Several other early alphabetic inscriptions found at Lachish lead scholars to emphasize its importance as a center for writing in the region.
While most historians consider Lachish to be a Canaanite center in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, the Bible has Lachish being captured by Joshua during the Conquest and it is listed as one of the cities of Judah, located in the Shephelah region of south-central Israel. It was later fortified by Rehoboam, the son of King Solomon, as he prepared for an attack from Egypt who had allied itself to Jeroboam and the northern kingdom of Israel. Recent finds seem to confirm the biblical account here. (Lachish city wall discovery tied to King Solomon’s son.)
Conclusion
The Lachish potsherd inscription using a Semitic alphabet highlights the spread of the alphabet in Canaan earlier than most believe. However, this fits the picture painted in the Bible that Israelite heads of households and even stray youths found in the field had the ability to read and write. Now we have even more evidence to support the Bible’s account.
No doubt, the lack of more numerous inscriptions in the region can be attributed to the fact that herdsmen didn’t carry around much pottery, but rather relied on animal skins and wooden surfaces on which to write. These would not survive long in the climate of Canaan. The assumption that Lachish in the Late Bronze Age was ‘Canaanite’ and even the automatic designation that this period must be connected to a date of 1450 BC are open to question. We look forward to more (and more ancient) finds of this sort in the years to come. Until then, Keep Thinking!
TOP PHOTO: An early alphabetic inscription found at Lachish. (credit: J. Dye, Austrian Academy of Sciences)
